


Perushim

by scapegrace74



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-01-25 20:07:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21361954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scapegrace74/pseuds/scapegrace74
Summary: An ongoing collection of innocuous moments in the life of Fox Mulder.  Or a useful place to write down all my Mulder POV one-shots.   Told in no particular order.   Ratings will vary, and any warnings will be posted on individual chapters.
Comments: 47
Kudos: 54





	1. Quiescence

**Author's Note:**

> If I had to pick a primary fixation with the male animal, it would have to be imagining their thoughts and motivations through commonplace observation. And who better to fixate on than my favourite fictional male animal of all time?  
The title is a Hebrew word that translates roughly to exegesis, or the interpretation of a primary text through scholarship and commentary. Seemed fitting.

Saturday stubble stuttered over the nap of his Navaho blanket. The rain now playing chimes against the windows had called off his afternoon three-on-three game, and the Knicks were on a west coast roadshow. Nothing required his concentration for hours.

At times lassitude was a tourniquet. Today, it was well-washed cotton over frictionless skin. He hovered in the stratosphere between dozing and directed thought, content to rise or sink on currents of whim. The hand resting over his navel scratched absently, flexed, then fell away.

Outside a gust of wind sent a wet slap against the building. The hiss of tires over asphalt lowered in pitch. He should place an order before the delivery drivers were all stuck in traffic. Instead he rolled in his leather furrow, tucking three fingers into the pleat of each bicep, and settled deeper into repose.

A sudden clamour and shush of footfalls from his hallway tugged his mind towards alertness. Their adagio beat was all wrong, however. They passed his door and decrescendoed into familiar silence. His thoughts snagged like bristles on wool. The thread that bound him to wakefulness began to spool out slowly, and he followed it down the Nautilus shell towards sleep.

_warm shoulder dinner soft amber female Scully soaring knuckle sleep_


	2. Deportment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: for mild language and libidinous thoughts.

"Excuse me. May I please have another whisky?" He held the plastic highball aloft for effect, lest his precise elocution not carry over the thrum of jet engines.

"Neat?" the stewardess inquired, her hand grazing over his own as she accepted the glass.

"Better make it on the rocks. I have to be able to steer straight, after we land." It was surprisingly easy to smile, to pretend, to skirt about the edges of flirtation. Diana was in Berlin, which meant his dance card could come out of retirement.

The woman, Dawn, sashayed up the aisle and he glanced at her firm ass, encased in a navy polyester skirt. He imagined the lacy indulgences she wore to compensate for the ugly uniform. By the time she returned with his drink, his eyes were back on the in-flight magazine. Hours of deportment class and Yankee breeding meant he rarely, if ever, got caught looking. Lust was natural, but lechery was vulgar.

"Are you travelling to Providence on business or pleasure?" Dawn inquired, taking in his well-cut suit and freshly decoupled ring finger.

"Neither, a family obligation." His father had sent him the first class ticket, mentioning some financial matters that needed to be discussed. He probably wanted them to commiserate over their newly shared status as divorcees. Hell would freeze first.

The engines changed pitch as the overhead seatbelt sign flashed on. He lifted his chin and downed two fingers of golden liquid in a long gulp. As he handed Dawn the glass of ice cubes, her eyes sheered away from the dark shadows of his throat. 

"Will you be needing me for anything else, Mr. Mulder?" she asked, leaving any number of options on the table. He gave the notion a second's consideration. Who didn't harbour a flight attendant fantasy?

"Thank you, but not today."


	3. Elohim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure - I’m not Jewish, but I believe Mulder is, at least culturally. Nothing but respect for the religion, culture, and their observances is intended.

“Wie geht es dir, Fox?” Not even the lapsed formality of a telephone call could soften his mother’s crisp Mitteleuropa diction. Twas ever thus, and thus shall it ever be. He should probably just get over it.

“Alright, Ma.”

Every Friday afternoon since he left for Oxford, he calls his mother. The conversations follow a pattern, knitting a banal consistency through his otherwise chaotic adult life. No matter how superficial the contact, he never misses a call. The heavy emptiness in the midst of his family demands it. The void left by one missing girl is vast.

“Have they found that woman? Your partner?”

He supposes he should be thankful that she remembers this detail from their previous calls, but instead he adds the weight of one more disappointment to his tally.

“No. I’m still looking, though.” He wants her to acknowledge his faithfulness, his unending sense of duty. He also wants to fly, and both are equally unlikely.

“It is a shame. She’s goyische, nein?”

This also was ever thus. For a non-practicing Jewish woman who married a man who was, at best, a non-observant Protestant, his mother maintained a strict delineation in her worldview. There was ‘one of us’, and there was everybody else. And you got no say in whether you were counted as ‘one of us’. Otherwise, he would have informed his mother years ago that he’d left his card-carrying Judaism behind with all the other trappings of youth. In a box, on a shelf in his closet, with the other happy memories that only served to remind him of who he no longer was.

“She’s Catholic. Irish-American. Her name is Scully, Ma. Dana Scully.” 

“Ah.”

He could hear the words she didn’t say. Shiksha. A distraction from the true cause.

“But she’s still missing, so I am still looking for her.” He let the snarling animal inside of him loose for a moment, and it lashed out in pique.

“Her poor mother.”

Aaaand, there it was. Every conversation with mother must include a subtle jab of this sort.

“I need to go, Mutter. Shabbat shalom. Call me if you need anything.”

“Shabbat shalom, Fox.”

He stared at the receiver for a moment, an impotent rage boiling up within him like a geyser. He hurled the neutral plastic across the room, watching it chip and bounce off the door frame and then land, skittering wildly, on the hardwood.

So much for his phone. It was alright, though. Wherever she was, Scully wouldn’t be calling him. And no matter that she didn’t observe the sabbath, his mother wouldn’t be calling back.

***

Here is what he is.

He is a first-born son, an unwary recipient of privilege, which came looking for its dues when he least expected it. He is an outcast, an intellectual, a jerk and an albatross. He is one of the chosen people of G-d; afflicted with the burden of that choice. He is alone.


	4. Complicity

He came around the corner with Scully's autopsy report open like a diner menu in front of him. Scanning down the page as he walked, his eyebrow rose in recognition of his partner's findings.

Said partner was in the wood-paneled lounge that was serving as a briefing room for the cavalcade of law enforcement officers that had descended on the small Texas sheriff's office in the past week. Currently almost empty, the space was strewn with dirty coffee mugs, discarded fax cover sheets and the lingering musk of testosterone. Besides the receptionist, Scully was the only woman in the building, and it hadn't occurred to anyone to take down the local tire shop calendar featuring models wearing little more than gratuitous oil smears that hung next to the fridge. Or it had occurred to someone, and they'd left it up to make a point. They were consulting deep inside the misogyny belt.

"... appreciate that this means a lot of effort has been wasted, Dr. Kirchner, but if the ligature marks had been correctly identified in the preliminary investigation..."

Scully had a panoply of didactic tones, barely distinguishable to the untutored ear. There was "I know I'm right and you know I'm right let's dispense with the pre-text", and "I know I'm right but I'm giving you fair hearing out of respect", and "I know I'm right but there's more to it than that so tell me what you're thinking". Right now, her clipped consonants and jutting chin were directed at the local medical examiner and said "I know I'm right and you're a chauvinistic knuckle-dragger who is lucky I don't have the time or inclination to broadcast your incompetence more broadly". 

Fortunately for Mulder, he'd rarely been on the receiving end of that particular tone. He hovered near the door, outside the fallout zone but close enough to enjoy the show. He knew Scully was aware of his presence by the slightest brightening of her acid-wash glare, which remained fixed on the stout man confronting her. From his vantage, he witnessed a florid stain as it rose over the rolls of loose skin above the ME's tight collar. Beneath his comb-over, the man's bald pate was beaded with sweat.

"... you think you are, Miss Scully, but I was the county medical examiner while you were still playing with..."

Only a few inches taller than his partner, Dr. Kirchner took a step towards her, now so close that his considerable paunch nearly grazed Scully's outstretched hands. Mulder didn't move, but he grew more alert, his hackles raised. Without losing eye contact with her adversary, Scully gave her head a minute shake, just enough to tell him to stand down, that she had everything under control. As he left to search for a landline to report this latest update to Skinner, he saw her lean even further into the man's personal space, causing him to shuffle backwards in retreat.

"... Special Agent of the FBI and a board-certified forensic pathologist who was specifically summoned due to my expertise in...."


	5. Dungeon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: profane language and libidinous thoughts.

The stairwell opened like a cattle chute onto the dimly lit rodeo of a subterranean nightclub. Systolic bass and primal wailing emerged from the sound system, cutting his thoughts to shreds. This sweaty bacchanal wasn't his scene, but another night spent hunched over his textbooks, and he was going to become the next case study in his Abnormal Psychology class.

Standing against the bar, he nursed a vodka tonic and considered the tab of acid his flatmate had slipped into his wallet, next to a worn condom wrapper just a few months shy of expiry. "You need to cut loose, Fox. I'm feeling celibate just sharing the same air with you. Don't come back until you get laid."

A dark haired woman with legs like a gazelle and the predatory gaze of a jungle cat stalked straight towards him. They locked eyes and his lips parted on an exhalation that released terror and a lustful whine. Just before she reached the place where he stood nailed to the floor, she veered left and greeted the bartender by name, leaning over to kiss him on the mouth. He studiously ignored their exchange, feeling oddly cheated.

A hand slipped into the back pocket of his jeans and cupped his ass. The feline woman was behind him, breathing against his neck. 

"Fancy a dance?" Fingernails bit into his tender flesh, and his cock jumped like a fish against his fly. Silent assent was given, and she led him by the arm beneath the neon arbour of the dance floor.

Forty minutes later, he was reclined in a leather armchair with the woman perched on his erection. She was holding ice cubes dipped in Kahlua to his mouth for him to suck. If she squirmed a little more rhythmically, he was going to impregnate her right ass cheek.

"Oh, I see an old friend! You don't mind if I join him for a few moments, do you Fox?" She pronounced his name like candy on her tongue, like a verbal caress, like what he wanted to be doing to her.

"I'll just grab another drink from the bar," he suggested, intending to cool his jets in the men's room along the way. "Can I get you anything, Phoebe?"

"I want you to stay here. Right where you can watch me. I bet you like to watch, don't you, Fox?"


	6. Grand Master

In Bill Mulder's study there was a chess set, its magical figures carved out of ivory and macassar. The board occupied a round table, pieces frozen mid-crusade, awaiting the return of a worthy opponent. After supper Fox would sometimes peak around the door and see his father standing next to the board, a whisky in his hand, considering how to best their neighbour or a visiting business associate. Even then, he understood only one thing about the cipher who was Bill Mulder: he did not lose.

"Join me in my study, Fox," came the summons one winter's evening when he was eight. He entered the room cautiously, almost on tip-toe in his socked feet. His father sat before the chess board, its smooth surface glowing in the golden lamplight.

"Have a seat, son," he gestured across from him. "Do you know the rules of chess?"

"Yes, sir. That is, they've taught us to play at school, and I think I remember how." He concentrated on meeting his father's direct gaze, despite the temptation to let his eyes dance over the details of the room, usually off-limits to children.

"Very good. I thought we might begin a game."

"Tonight, sir?"

"Yes, tonight. We can play when I'm home from Washington, as long as you promise never to come into my study and move the pieces while I'm away."

"Of course not, sir. May Samantha join us? She probably wouldn't understand the rules, but I know she would love the horses." He let his young finger slide gently over the crested mane of a white knight.

"This is something just for us men. Chess hones the mind; it teaches strategy and ruthlessness and sacrifice. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good. Now, what will be your first move?"


	7. Noblesse Oblige

He sat sulking in his tuxedo, surrounded by a Hollywood sound stage's mille-feuille of artifice. It was his Achilles heel, this inability to bear ridicule. If he could only laugh along with the crowd, the threat would pass. Instead he'd felt a boiling panic rising in the chill of the theatre. Before he knew it, he was storming out like a jilted lover, mirroring the low-brow comedy on-screen.

Scully would come looking for him, so he tried to compose himself. They shared this aversion to histrionics, to emotional publicity, and yet he'd heard her tiny guffaws from the seat next to him. Perhaps he should ask for her secret.

The film made their relationship - professional, emotional, romantic - a tawdry punchline, and if he was being brutally honest with himself, that was a very real fear. He could dress it up in as many fancy terms as he chose, but he was sleeping with his female subordinate. What felt rare and sacrosanct was no different in its mechanics than every other office romance, which set him prowling around its perimeter, growling at imagined threats.

She approached in her chunky heels with constellations in her hair, cooling his fever like a sea breeze. He'd let her laugh at him, poke fun at his overblown self-regard, tease him out of his bad humour. Then they could both put this whole debacle behind them, and get on with the business of being in love.


	8. Manumission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rated a strong R for language and self-pleasuring.

It was past late, that meager slice of night when the city was quiet and still. A black cat time, when babies were born and dreams died.

He'd hung his suit coat off the doorknob, left a rumpled hill of fabric on the tile, and stepped into the scalding shower. He didn't even bother scrubbing, just letting the caustic spray punish his gritty skin. When the room was murky with steam, he toweled off, swallowed two Advil dry and went to bed nude.

The sheets felt sweet against his bruised nerves. For a time he lay flat, corpse-like, and let memories stretch their long fingers into the corners of his mind. The gravity of sleep pulled him inwards, but he found he could not release his hold on the day. Knuckling his eyes in frustration, he flexed his groin once, experimentally, and sighed.

When the mantle covering the febrile core of him was thinnest, arousal was a mere thought away. He let his resistance slip and felt a surge of electricity shimmer down his spine, plummeting deep behind his balls. Rather than reach for himself immediately, he concentrated on the tentative kiss of cotton against his thighs, his dewy breath, the muscular yoke of his torso. Every cell in his body came online, and his cock woke from its semi-swollen slumber to shunt eagerly against his pelvis.

It wasn't going to take a lot tonight, and that was a blessing because he needed to rest. Dispensing with any preliminaries, he used his right hand to pull on his sac, warm and still loose, to join the thickened base of his shaft, tugging all three away from his body. Something worked free inside him, a sensation like losing cabin pressure, and blood pumped emphatically beneath his hand, stretching the tender skin to the knife-edge of pain. He tried a few experimental strokes, but his skin was dry, the landscape of his palm too recognizable.

His options flickered past. Without opening his eyes he grabbed for the nightstand drawer and removed a tiny handful of silk. Gloving his palm in the ecstatically smooth material, he grabbed his cock and began the dance. Without friction, his grip could be punishingly tight. Brute passion replaced conscious thought as he slammed into his sleek fist again and again. The paralysis that was a harbinger of release seized him as he fought for each breath. The whirlpool opened up, just past his reach. He yearned towards it in desperation, sobbing silently.

Balanced on the tip of a needle, it took the tiniest event to plunge. It came in the guise of a scrap of decorative lace, its rough edges biting just once against the seam of his circumcision scar. Scarlet billows of ecstasy swallowed the world. Into the resulting void he pumped out every last drop of sensation, leaving him mute and blind. A familiar humid weight settled over him. Still winded but fading fast, he dabbed at his tacky skin and then tossed the soiled panties into his open laundry bin before sinking gratefully into sleep.


End file.
